United Airlines broke my cats foot in transit, refuses to pay

Just in case you were serious... it's extremely unlikely. For the sake of argument: imagine you're in a locked room. Let's imagine you want to get out. How likely are you to actually break a bone trying to get out? Extremely unlikely, because you're not using your hand for a crowbar and even if you were you'd stop when your body says "hey jerk, that hurts a lot."

Also, when cats get scared, they tend to hide. They find a small, dark, safe-seeming space and stay put. So it's also extremely unlikely the cat would even want to leave its "safe" carrier and go running around in a comparatively open, new scary place with all sorts of unusual (to it) smells and sounds. So In the locked-in-a-room analogy, the cat isn't even likely to try the door in the first place.

So, let's take the analogy one step further. What would make you, locked in the room, willing to ignore your brain and break a bone trying to leave the room? Terror. Sheer terror. There's a murderer advancing on you. Water is rising from the floor and you think you'll drown. A pile of spiders has appeared and wants to use you as a nest. Basically... something that makes you feel that doing major injury to yourself (if you're even capable) is preferable.

So in the tiiiiiiiiny corner case where the cat a) decides to leave the carrier and b) wants to so badly that it breaks its own bones to do so.... it'd have to already be absurdly terrified by whatever was going on down there that surely the airline already would've fallen down on its duty of humane transport...

/r/legaladvice Thread Parent